Reflecting on 7 months in Business

March 4, 2017

7 months in business. 7 months… wow. It feels odd typing that since it feels like it’s been only a few months.

One unexpected thing about writing these reflective posts is they are really enjoyable because:

  • I review the good, the bad, and the ugly and take corrective action as needed.
  • It keeps me accountable to my Goals and Priorities.
  • Acts as a historical log so I can go back and review things.

What’s New

  • Project Workload Rollercoaster. January and February were really busy but now I have more availability for other projects. If you need some Salesforce work done, Contact Me. I completed a quick start Salescloud implementation and completed my primary, full-time 6 month project too. There’s other work but it’s part-time.
  • New prospect. After coming upon this blog, this vendor reached out to me about doing some contract work. We’re in early discussions but I am excited about working with them because they share the same values as me like putting your customers and employees first and giving back to the community. They also have very talented people and a diverse set of projects. There are other prospects of course so here’s to seeing what may be.
  • Turned down renewing my primary contract. For a variety of reasons, it was time to move on despite the client wanting to keep me on. The project is in better shape than I found it and they’re in good hands so I have no doubt they’ll succeed.
  • AutoRabit. It’s a cloud based Salesforce continuous integration and deployment SAAS solution and it’s great for a turn-key solution. It does deployments from various sources such as a source org, from version control, and even from past deployments. It also does version control management where you can specify the changes to commit from your org into a specific branch. These changes can then be collected into a “release” and promoted to various downstream orgs as needed. It also does data migration, UI testing, and static code analysis. Overall, it’s a great solution. Check it out if you haven’t heard of it. It’s better than rolling your own solution using a CI server such as Jenkins or Teamcity with the ANT Migration Toolkit if you can afford it.
  • More Job Offers. It’s reassuring to know that people want to hire you. Each one is attractive but I have to decline for the same reasons mentioned back in Reflecting on 4 months in Business. The most recent offer from this week was very tempting though because I really like working with these guys and the company culture and camaraderie is amazing. If I ever hire others, their culture is what I aspire to make mine like.

What’s Next

  • More Lightning. The basics are behind me and now I am going to do some more involved customizations that require components talking to each other and involve a custom community using the Napili template. There’s definitely more interest in Lightning in the community and I still believe 2017 will be the year it becomes mainstream.
  • Learn other Salesforce technologies such as DX and Einstein.
  • Expand the Network. Of the 4 items to complete from my 4 months in Business post, 2 are completed and the Lightning one is well underway. This one hasn’t started yet but will soon.
  • Lightning Product? I have this idea for a Lightning Product but am reluctant to invest in it. It is high-risk, high-reward. After helping bring a product to the AppExchange, I know what it takes to build one but selling, marketing, and supporting it are very different.

Last but not least, thank you new prospect for helping me realize I didn’t have an easier way to contact me through this website. That was resolved by adding the Contact page and the link to it in the main navigation.

How are your professional aspirations going?